UPDATED 00:28 EDT / FEBRUARY 02 2016

NEWS

More than one billion people are now using WhatsApp, making it the world leader in messaging

Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp has seen a surge in popularity over the last few years with the number of users reaching a whopping one billion this week, according to a WhatsApp official blog post. That means one in seven people who live on our fair planet are active WhatsApp users.

When Facebook acquired the app back in 2014 for $19 billion it’s believed the number of users was somewhere between 450-500 million users. Prior to the acquisition WhatsApp had already seen some pretty incredible numbers, going from 0-400 million users in its first four years, and just five months ago that number was at 900 million. Incidentally, as of September 2015 Facebook had 1.55 billion monthly active users.

“WhatsApp began as a simple idea: ensuring that anyone could stay in touch with family and friends anywhere on the planet without costs or gimmicks standing in the way.”  said the company about its achievement. WhatsApp added that presently around 42 billion messages are sent every day, while 1.6 billion photos  and 250 million videos are also shared daily. Messages are sent in the 53 languages the app supports.

Prior to WhatsApp hitting the one billion mark messaging app statistics were released in January this year, showing WhatsApp out in front with 900 million. In second place came Facebook’s Messenger at 800 million, then China’s QQ Mobile at 860 million, WeChat at 650 million, and around the 250-300 million mark were skype, Viber and Line.

WhatsApp might be a global leader, but that doesn’t mean the messaging app can sit back. WeChat and QQ Mobile have largely got the Chinese market (only 2 percent of WhatsApp’s users are in China), while Line is also very popular in Asian countries such as Japan (0 percent of WhatsApp’s users) and Thailand (9 percent). Even the American market is not at all sewn up by WhatsApp, with South Africa, Malaysia, Argentina, Singapore and Hong Kong being WhatsApp’s five biggest consuming countries.

WhatsApp may have been created in Silicon Valley by two former Yahoo engineers, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, but residents of the USA actually only make up 8 percent of the app’s users.

Photo credit: Jan Persiel via Flickr

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU